In the late nineteenth century\, at a time when women w
ere challenging traditional ideas about gender that excluded them from pol
itical and intellectual life\, medical and scientific experts drew on noti
ons of female weakness to justify inequality between the sexes. Artist and
writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman\, who was discouraged from pursuing a car
eer to preserve her health\, rejected these ideas in a terrifying short st
ory titled “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” The famous tale served as an indictmen
t of the medical profession and the social conventions restricting women’s
professional and creative opportunities.

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“The Literature of Prescription\,” a traveling exhibition\, developed and
produced by the National Library of Medicine\, will be exhibited in the se
cond floor gallery of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine and is ava
ilable with the regular price of admission to the Museum.